Drug-testing Medicaid recipients is one of those ideas. Already shown to be costly and ineffective in other states, the idea is one more solution in search of a problem. Studies show that drug use among work support recipients is lower than the general population.[1]In most states, less than 1 percent of applicants have tested positive.[2]

Neighboring Missouri provides a lesson for Iowa on cost. Missouri spent $336,297 on drug testing of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) in 2017.[3] After initial screening, the state tested 108 of 32,774 TANF applicants, finding 11 positive results. That’s an investment of over $30,000 per positive test. Another 305 applicants did not show up for a drug test or refused to take one.[4]

Iowa is familiar with these costs. Last session, a similar bill was proposed to implement drug testing for SNAP and Medicaid recipients. A Department of Human Services administrator estimated that costs to the state would have been at least $100 million.[5]

Medicaid plays a vital role in insuring more than 260,000 Iowa children.[6] Restricting access to medical care through drug testing poses a threat to child well being, by reducing resources available to the household as a whole.[7]

Over 225,000 Iowans living in working households struggle to make ends meet.[8] Medicaid and Affordable Care Act subsidies are important work supports that help families get by when wages aren’t enough to cover basic costs.

In Iowa, the large majority of Medicaid recipients who can work do work. Eighty-seven percent live in a working family and 72 percent work themselves.[9]

Instead of making it more difficult for low-income families to get the medical care they need, Iowa can invest in its workers by expanding the state Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Care Assistance programs. Other alternatives include raising wages to more accurately reflect workers’ productivity and higher living costs, or adequately funding mental health care.

Complicating Iowans’ ability to get checkups and the medications they need will not improve workforce participation.

Iowa’s Medicaid program carries two major purposes. First, Medicaid provides medical care for the elderly; in fact, 44 percent of Medicaid spending goes for long-term services and supports for seniors.[1] About half of Iowa nursing home residents benefit from Medicaid.[2]

Second, Medicaid covers thousands of Iowans working in low-wage jobs with no health insurance benefits and to thousands of others who have a disability that prevents them from working. Nearly half of all Medicaid recipients in Iowa are children.[3]

The data show that Medicaid is an important work support. Most non-elderly adult Medicaid enrollees in Iowa work — 72 percent — and 87 percent live in a working family.[4]

Among Medicaid enrollees in Iowa, larger shares of African-American and Latino enrollees are working than whites. One-third of Iowa working Medicaid enrollees work in smaller companies, which likely do not provide employer-sponsored insurance. It might surprise Iowans to know the largest group of Iowa workers receiving Medicaid work in elementary and secondary schools.[5]

Imposing new requirements for Medicaid would complicate health-care access for low-wage workers, children, veterans, older Iowans and Iowans with disabilities. It would not improve workforce participation.

Contrary to some political claims, studies in case after case show the main impact of extra Medicaid requirements is not better jobs,[6] but disenrollment in Medicaid, worse health outcomes, less access to care, and financial insecurity.[7]Rather than promoting good health that is important for employment and productivity, added Medicaid eligibility requirements undermine the goal of encouraging work.

If policy makers’ goal is to increase workforce participation, more practical approaches exist in expanding the state Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Care Assistance eligibility.

Not only do new Medicaid requirements fail to encourage work, but they make sustaining coverage difficult for people who are exempt from work, such as Iowans with disabilities, who may face obstacles in documentation and verification. Workers with variable hours, particularly in food service, retail, and seasonal jobs, could face similar issues.

Many working Medicaid enrollees work full time, but their low annual wages still quality them for Medicaid.[8] Rural communities rely heavily on Medicaid; disenrollment could harm rural hospitals and restrict access to care for children, the elderly, and veterans.[9]

It makes no sense to restrict access to health care for Iowans who are working or are exempt due to age or disability status.

Under the Senate health proposal, uninsurance in Iowa would be more than double what it would be under the current Affordable Care Act.

What Iowans need to know about coverage and costs

Health care policy is a complex issue. There’s no getting around that. But one way to consider the options vs. what we have is to look at basic, reliable estimates of the real-life impacts of the policy choices. How many Iowans would have insurance, and how many would not?

The Urban Institute has state-by-state estimates of these impacts. By 2022 — five years from now — under the Senate’s proposed Better Care Reconciliation Act, uninsurance in Iowa would more than double. Across the board of various population groups, significantly more Iowans (including children) would be uninsured than under the current Affordable Care Act, (ACA, or ObamaCare).

According to the Urban Institute:

• 148,000 non-elderly adults would be uninsured, or 8 percent, under the ACA, compared with 351,000 under BCRA, or 19 percent. This is an increase of 137 percent.

• 25,000 children would be uninsured, or 3.2 percent, under the ACA, compared with 54,000 under BCRA, or 6.9 percent. This is an increase of 117 percent.

• 115,000 non-elderly, non-Hispanic white Iowans would be uninsured under the ACA, or 5.4 percent, compared with 306,000 under BCRA, or 14.3 percent. This is an increase of 167 percent.

• 38,000 non-elderly Hispanic Iowans would be uninsured under the ACA, or 16.6 percent, compared with 53,000 under BCRA, or 23 percent. This is an increase of almost 39 percent.

How we assure health care access to low-income Iowans needs to be the central issue here, not an afterthought.

Why do we have Medicaid? It’s a simple question with a simple answer. We have Medicaid because if we don’t, there are millions of Americans, and nearly 600,000 Iowans, who will not be able to get health care. Private industry will not provide it.

Why, we must ask, would we turn over to private industry a critical part of our public safety net to business interests that operate with a principal purpose of making money?

How do we assure that services are provided, that our responsibilities are met, if the people running the operation are not answerable to us?

As the legislative Health Policy Oversight Committee meets today about the Governor’s privatization edict on Medicaid, we need to remind ourselves of these basic questions.

When the Governor cannot detail the purported savings and our common sense tells us otherwise, we need an assurance that data will be available — and publicly available — to monitor what is happening with a service that has been accountable and efficient in expanding health-care access to Iowans who need it. We need to know Iowa is not setting itself to repeat problems that have been demonstrated in other states.

What will pass for public oversight after we’ve turned over the keys to private industry?

Over three dozen people and organizations filed comments (available here) with the oversight committee for today’s meeting at the Statehouse. Many have a firsthand understanding of the purpose and practice of Medicaid as we know it, and serious questions of their own about the uncertain world where the Governor is taking us, on his own.

Clearly, many fundamental questions have not been fully vetted through the legislative process, nor given a hearing before the decision was made within the Governor’s Office.

How we assure health care access to low-income Iowans needs to be the central issue here, not an afterthought.

When the costs of insurance keep rising, that makes it tougher on the household budget — or results in people not having insurance.

The Cedar Rapids Gazette today offered an interesting look at the question of where Iowans get their insurance. It’s less and less something that comes through employment. And when the costs of insurance keep rising, that makes it tougher on the household budget — or results in people not having insurance.

The Affordable Care Act offers at least a partial remedy. As health insurance exchanges are developed, affordable insurance should be more readily available. Tax credits for employers providing insurance will provide a targeted incentive to offer employees a better option than what employees might find on the individual insurance market.

Colin Gordon

Our State of Working Iowa report for 2012 offers another good look at this issue. As author Colin Gordon observes, wage stagnation, erosion of good jobs and recession have combined to batter workers, at the same time non-wage forms of compensation, health and pension benefits, also have declined. This has eroded both job quality and family financial security, and increased the need for public insurance. In Chapter 3, “The Bigger Picture,” Gordon writes that Iowa is one of 15 states, including five in the Midwest, to lose more than 10 percent of job-based coverage in a decade. He continues:

These losses reflect two overlapping trends. The first of these is costs. Health spending has slowed in recent years, but still runs well ahead of general inflation. Both premium costs … and the employee’s share of premiums have risen sharply — especially for family coverage — while wages have stagnated.

In 1999, a full-time median-wage worker in Iowa needed to work for about 10 weeks in order to pay an annual family premium; by 2011, this had swollen to nearly 25 weeks. Steep cost increases have pressed employers to drop or cut back coverage, or employees to decline it when offered. High costs may also encourage more employees to elect single coverage — counting on spousal coverage from another source and kids’ coverage through public programs. The second factor here is the shift in sectoral employment outlined above: Job losses are heaviest in sectors that have historically offered group health coverage; and job gains (or projected job gains) are strongest in sectors that don’t offer coverage.

This graph looks at the rate of employer-sponsored coverage, by industry sector, from 2002 to 2012.

An interactive version of that graph in the online report allows the reader to toggle between those two years; the colored balloons sink on the graph in moving from 2002 to 2012, as if they all are losing air — the result of declining rates of coverage.

Can we govern ourselves? Apparently national candidates will come calling in Iowa without worrying about that. So maybe we should answer it for ourselves.

Does Iowa have the will to govern itself?

How ironic that we have reason to ask that question, a week after a presidential election that capped three-plus years of courting of Iowa voters, and a few days before a potential 2016 candidate visits to start all of it brewing again.

Yet the question is unavoidable. Consider two pieces in today’s Des Moines Register.

First, the Register reports, the federal Environmental Protection Agency may take over water quality enforcement in Iowa due to weak efforts by Iowa’s state Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

“EPA should help the agency in bargaining with a legislature that has shown itself to be less concerned with water quality protection than tax cuts. … There is no question that if EPA simply accepts the agency’s agreement to try to do better, water quality will not improve in this state.”

If the EPA admonishment of Iowa’s lax environmental enforcement were not enough, we also are waiting for the state to offer its long-overdue decision on how to proceed on health reform. The 2012 election affirms the Affordable Care Act will not be repealed, so the state’s dragging its heels on creating a health insurance exchange no longer makes sense — if it ever did.

Yet, we now have a real question of whether it’s a good idea for the state to move ahead on its own with an exchange, where Iowans can shop for affordable insurance and not be denied coverage, or having the federal government do it for us. As the Register opined in an editorial today, “It is too important for this state to mess up.” Citing problems implementing temporary high-risk pools, and political dealings in previous legislative attempts to create an exchange, the Register noted:

“Iowans need the coming insurance marketplace to work for them in years to come. But state leaders have shown they are not the ones to design it.”

Can we govern ourselves? Apparently national candidates will come calling in Iowa without worrying about that. So maybe we should answer if for ourselves.

The central purpose of the law should not be lost in the discussion: to expand health insurance coverage and help create a health system that works for everyone.

Andrew Cannon

While many are focusing on the political and judicial ramifications of today’s Supreme Court ruling affirming the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), it’s important to focus on how the law will affect health coverage.

ACA provisions at the heart of the Supreme Court decision are the personal responsibility requirement (or individual mandate) and the Medicaid expansion. Both provisions are not scheduled to take effect until January 1, 2014.

However, a number of provisions have been in effect since 2010 — shortly after the law’s passage, and have helped make insurance coverage accessible and more affordable for millions of Americans. Today’s ruling upholding the law means that millions of Americans will retain that coverage and those benefits.

Among the provisions currently in effect:

Young adult coverage — Uninsured persons age 18 through 25 may continue to be insured as a dependent on their parents’ health coverage. This provision has extended health care coverage to an estimated 6.6 million young Americans.[1]

Protections against pre-existing condition exclusions for children — The ACA prevents insurers from denying coverage to sick children. In Iowa, there are up to 51,000 children who have pre-existing conditions.[2]

The end of lifetime and annual benefit limits — Consumers with serious health conditions and treatment expenses no longer need to worry about bumping against maximum amounts an insurer will pay.

The elimination of the Medicare “doughnut hole” — Under existing Medicare law, seniors with high prescription costs had to pay for prescriptions entirely out-of-pocket. The ACA gradually eliminates this “doughnut hole,” providing seniors a 50 percent discounts on name-brand drugs and a 7 percent discount on generic drugs.

Tax credits for small businesses — Small businesses that meet specified qualifications may presently receive a tax credit if they offer their employees coverage and cover at least half of the premium cost.[3] Estimates of the number of eligible businesses vary, from about 2.6 million to about 4 million.[4] Take-up has been limited, partially due to lack of awareness.

Provisions that will take effect in 2014:

Expanding Medicaid coverage — Under the ACA, uninsured individuals with earnings at or below 133 percent of the federal poverty level ($30,657 for a family of four in 2012) will qualify for enrollment in Medicaid. If Iowa fully participates in the Medicaid expansion, as many as 114,700 Iowans may receive coverage.[5]

Creation of new insurance marketplaces, or “exchanges” — The ACA instructs states to construct new insurance marketplaces, accessible by Internet, in which those who don’t receive insurance through their employer may shop for insurance coverage. Individuals who don’t qualify for Medicaid coverage will receive tax credits to help them cover the cost of their heath premium. This is the group affected by the individual mandate. According to estimates, as many as 250,000 Iowans could find their health coverage through the new insurance marketplace, or exchange.[6]

While legal scholars and political pundits will undoubtedly have much to say for months on today’s decision, the central purpose of the law should not be lost in the discussion: to expand health insurance coverage and help create a health system that works for everyone.